This paper studies how interest group lobbying of the bureaucracy affects policy
outcomes and how it changes the legislature’s willingness to delegate decision-making
authority to the bureaucracy. We extend the standard model of delegation to account
for interest group influence during the implementation stage of policy and apply it
to different institutional structures of government. The paper addresses the following
questions: First, how does the decision to delegate change when the bureaucratic agent
is subject to external influence? What cost does this influence impose on the legislative
principal? Finally, how susceptible are policy choices to bureaucratic lobbying under
different government structures? In answering these questions, the paper seeks to provide
a comparative theory of lobbying and to explain the different patterns of interest
group activity across political systems.